First Human Occupations of the Southern Atacama Desert (24.5° S): Settlement Dynamics and Environmental Context
Author(s): Patricio De Souza; Isabel Cartajena; Rodrigo Riquelme; Eugenia De Porras; Boris Santander
Year: 2021
Summary
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The early peopling of the Atacama Desert coincided with the Central Andean Pluvial Event II (CAPE II), an extensive pluvial event during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene (13,800–8500 cal yr BP). A large number of early human archaeological sites from this period have been found along the borders of the Imilac and Punta Negra (24.5° S) high altitude basins (ca. 3,000 m asl). By combining the results of proxy data obtained from geomorphological, sedimentological archives and paleoecological (rodent middens), the spatial location of archaeological sites and radiocarbon series analyses, the paper examined, at a finer spatial and temporal scale, discontinuities in the records at different times during CAPE II in the southern Atacama Desert. A link between changes in precipitation regimes and the relocation of settlements, occupation of new spaces, and ultimately the abandonment of the area around the Imilac and Punta Negra salt flats are proposed. The established moisture anomaly threshold lead us to rethink the drylands and their moisture changes as well as the minimum conditions for human occupation.
Cite this Record
First Human Occupations of the Southern Atacama Desert (24.5° S): Settlement Dynamics and Environmental Context. Patricio De Souza, Isabel Cartajena, Rodrigo Riquelme, Eugenia De Porras, Boris Santander. Presented at The 86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2021 ( tDAR id: 467554)
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Keywords
Geographic Keywords
South America: Andes
Spatial Coverage
min long: -82.441; min lat: -56.17 ; max long: -64.863; max lat: 16.636 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 32845